Elephant as bell for the cycle

Jagriti has been an interesting journey so far. Inspiring, eye-opening; but most of all confusing. On the ground, it is opening new kinds of interactions with my son.

Couple of weeks ago, we had a session on creativity. Post that session, I started to pull my-creative side in my conversations with Advay. Here I share one such incident.

My son (Advay) has recently become fascinated with riding his bicycle. It was a hand-me-down from his cousin brother Avyay, who is 6 years older to him. Advay & I took the cycle and got it serviced. Advay also cleaned, sand-paper-scrubbed and painted some parts of his cycle & personalised it.

Anyways, the other day Advay came up with this during dinner

Advay: I think I need a bell for my cycle. All the other kids have bells for their cycle, I also need one.

Me: With a bell you can made sound right? Can’t you make the sound with your mouth? Do you really need a bell?

Advay: Yes, I need a bell for it. Lets go buy that bell we saw in Decathlon.

Me(catching myself giving gyan & feeling a light-bulb-from-session-on-creativity switching on in my head): Lets think of different kinds of bells we can attach to your cycle. There is that one kind in Decathlon. Hmmmm…. How about tying a dog to your cycle? Whenever you want to bell, you can tap the dog and ask it to bark?

Advay(clearly amused by the image of dog barking on his cycle): I think we should use an Elephant instead of dog on the cycle. Elephants can make very loud noise.

(My wife, Advay and I are sharing a laugh at the image of an elephant on his cycle)

Me: Yeah, or how about tiger?

Advay: People will run away and make space for my cycle. Or how about <some cartoon character, I forget which one>?

Like this we went on imagining a whole range of “bells” we could attach to the cycle. He was laughing and clearly enjoying all the imagination. At the end of which he said

Advay: I don’t want to buy that bell from Decathlon.

In his face, he seemed to have an expression that said – “I would love to attach an elephant as bell to my cycle. Seems way more fun than a typical bell.”

Buying a bell was not an issue for us. But the session on creativity gave me a sort of impetus to try and bring creativity, to what would have otherwise been a transactional (or authoritative) conversation, to spark imagination and go wild and have such a fun time with Advay. There was no agenda in the conversation, no end goal. But my son saw many possibilities for his cycle-bell. Which I take as progress!